America’s Bedbug Infestation Requires Military Intervention

Bedbugs! They’re destroying Freedom & Liberty even faster than Debbie Riddle and terror babies combined. In Ohio and several other states, the critters have become so unruly that local governments are calling on the feds — including the Department of Defense — to help find a solution.

Why is Defense the agency you turn to when plotting your War on Bugs? Because they issue Technical Guides on pest management and control. Also, bedbugs might become a national security issue because they scare Americans. Scaring Americans often leads to Americans declaring war, and war is the DoD’s bailiwick. See how that works?

Your Wonkette remembers early rumblings of Bedbug Fever back in the mid-aughts, before the problem reached Full-Blown Epidemic proportions. At the time we lived in New York City, which has since turned into a war zone in which bedbugs compete with cockroaches for territorial control. It’s like the Bloods and Crips all over again. Oh, and did you hear about those bedbugs who crashed the Manhattan movie theaters the other day? They’re worse than not-mosques.

For whatever reason, bedbugs have also become a serious problem in Ohio, which they seem to regard as some sort of paradise. What is this attraction to the Buckeye State all about? Maybe the bugs want to destroy the lives of Oberlin College students, or at the very least stop them from fornicating. At any rate, they’ve become so unruly that in Cincinnati people have turned to sleeping in the streets, because their beds have become bedbug nightclubs.

Bedbugs who have crossed into neighboring Kentucky have also taken over people’s apartments, holding movie marathons and eating up all the frozen pizzas and snacks. Even in Sarah Palin’s Alaska, ABC reports, bedbug infestation has reportedly increased by “800 percent,” because their small size makes them difficult to shoot from helicopters and snowmobiles. [ABC News/Time]

About the author

Lauri works at the Chicago Reader, and also writes and makes art-pictures for Wonkette. Her creative projects—including a now-defunct blog about finding clothing in the trash and wearing it, and an exhibition of portraits of all 50 Chicago aldermen made by 50 different artists—have been featured by NBC's Today Show, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, BUST Magazine, and other media outlets. She's written things for the Austin Chronicle, Texas Observer, In Pittsburgh Weekly, The Black Table, and other places, and taken photos for various nonprofits, bands, and publications. (She also has a law degree, for some reason.)

[re=641895]Naked Bunny with a Whip[/re]: Already in the comments of the Time article above, links to photos of border crossings, etc.

Cicada

[re=641920]TrailerSpawned[/re]: Bed bugs are often spread by tourists, so they should really be linking to pictures of pudgy white people with fanny packs and Hawaiian shirts.

S.Luggo

[re=641910]Extemporanus[/re]:
Jean Rasczak: You. Why are only citizens allowed to vote?
Student: It’s a reward. Something the federation gives you for doing federal service.
Jean Rasczak: No. Something given has no basis in value. When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you’re using force. And force my friends is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.
^^^^
So it has been said, so shall it be done.

BOOBIES!

Can’t we learn to coexist with our parasite overlords, like bedbugs and hookworms? Welcome to the bottom of the food chain humans.

GeneralLerong

At least bedbugs don’t carry horrible diseases…unlike these charmers, which drop onto sleeping victims in the dead of night:

Another reason to stay out of Ohio. And Minnesota, too. Also. You betcha.

steverino247

[re=641849]Terry[/re]: When I was stationed in Korea in 1975, we found a can of Army DDT bug spray (OD Green can) in some storage container we were supposed to clear out. We decided, despite the ban, to test spray a thick cloud of insects flying around a light at the guard post. Lights at night in Korea attract so many bugs, you sometimes can’t see the lights any more. Spritz! Everything dropped immediately dead to the ground. “Oooh, shit! Well, now we know why it’s banned. Somebody throw that shit away.”

Oldskool

Creepiest story of the year. Literally.

geminisunmars

[re=641954]GeneralLerong[/re]: Thanks for the insomnia.

AxmxZ

[re=642047]geminisunmars[/re]: Don’t worry about the triatomines. The Chagas they’ll give you is quite incurable and will definitely kill you, but usually not until you’re either old or your immune system is otherwise compromised.

(For a split second in time, I was the foremost expert in classification of triatomines in the southwestern US. Don’t ask how or why.)